Monday, March 9, 2026 Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been chosen as Iran’s new supreme leader following his father’s killing in U.S.-Israeli strikes, positioning a low-profile but long-rumored power broker at the apex of the Islamic Republic. The selection cements a potentially dynastic handover at the heart of a system founded in 1979 on religious authority and revolutionary legitimacy rather than hereditary succession. Mojtaba Khamenei has never held public office, rarely appeared in…

Iran’s Assembly of Experts has chosen Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, to succeed his late father as supreme leader, cementing hard-line control more than a week after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an air strike, Iranian media reported. The clerical body elevated the mid-ranking cleric, long seen as a power broker with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, following internal deliberations shaped by loyalty tests and wartime rhetoric. In a video message, council member Ayatollah Mohsen Heidari Alekasir said the…